A sophisticated friend of mine, also an excellent storyteller, surprised me with her take upon reading What a Duchess Does.
I’m paraphrasing, because I didn’t record the conversation, because fortunately we don’t have that kind of relationship, but essentially she said, “Oh, Nicholas is the type I adore. The strong silent type who’s hurting inside and who needs a hug.”
The surprising thing isn’t that she thought this – Nicholas is the strong silent type, he is definitely hurting inside, and he definitely needs a hug – but that I had never once thought of him that way. And I wrote the book.
And if you’d asked me, I’d’ve said I don’t like men who are strong silent types who need a hug.
It’s a cliché for a writer to say that her characters surprised her and went places she didn’t expect to go. This surprised me a bit more for what felt, at least, like a different reason. I thought I knew Nicholas. And it turns out, I didn’t really know him, or at least, I didn’t know him the way this reader knew him. Because she is of course right.
I have to get to know my characters as I’m writing the beginning of the book especially and feel my way into my relationship with them, and their relationships with each other. More than once I’ll be puttering around my plants of a morning thinking about something to do with a character I’m writing and something will fall into place, and I’ll say out loud: “I’ve gotcha.” I feel like I do have them; that they’re within reach. I could put out a hand and touch them.
But I’m never really outside of them, not the way my readers are. I know what I want them to be; it’s still surprising to me, I guess, that I manage to get it across on the page.
The downside is that it takes someone else reading the book to point out to me who my characters are in a nutshell.
So apparently, if you like strong, silent types who are secretly hurting and very much need a hug, Nicholas – Nicholas Hayden, you know, Duke of Talbourne – is your man.